


what you leave behind ( and what you take with you )

by viverella



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, POV Second Person, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, aka a lot of thinky stuff without much plot, plus a little shippy stuff if you squint. like a lot.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-11 21:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18432317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: What they don’t understand is that every roll is a bad roll in the end.( reflections on a life of borrowed time, of searching for meaning, of trying to find salvation in all the wrong, and sometimes some of the right, places )





	what you leave behind ( and what you take with you )

**Author's Note:**

> I'm honestly probably so late to the party, but the bf was recently rewatching some of his favorite classic animes so I started watching the 2011 run of hunter x hunter with him and ummmmm not to out myself as anime trash but........... I'm really in too deep lmao 
> 
> ANYWAY kite is the first character in the whole show who I considered like a _favorite_ favorite character and uh. well. I did not take his death well. I have a habit of not picking favorite characters well, I guess. so anyway, this is Embarrassing™️, but I can't stop thinking about this so here are some feelings that I needed to get out and this is the first time I've felt actually inspired to write anything in like months, so I'm just gonna ride this one out while I still got it. this might be it for this burst of inspiration, but I wrote 2k+ words in a matter of days so I'm gonna call this one a victory. I'm also like way anxious bc I haven't posted fic and especially not in a new fandom to me in a long time but uhhhhh to the like two of you who are here with me, enjoy!!

What they don’t understand is that every roll is a bad roll in the end. This, you have always known. It’s become almost a joke, in a way, and it would be funny if you had anyone to share it with, but everyone who would understand is out of reach and everyone who surrounds you now wouldn’t get it. It’s a promise. To yourself. To the world. And the great irony of your life is that the one thing that’s given your life meaning is also the one thing that’s slowly draining it. 

You meet a boy who’s an echo of a past life, and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You settle instead for carefully measured kindness, but your heart cracks each time he asks about his father. You offer to tell him the answer to his most burning question, not sure if you would be more disappointed if he said yes or no. Disappointed about breaking a oath. Disappointed about keeping it and living with the consequences. He says no, and you feel like your heart could burst. It’s too much and too familiar, and you think about everything that’s ever happened in your life because someone had the courage to run across the world, and you wish you could tell him that sometimes, it’s okay to take the easy way out. That sometimes, it’s okay to just be a kid. 

_Are you sad?_ Gon asks you, wide-eyed and earnest, and you wonder if you were ever that way, if you could ever remember a time you weren’t beaten down and cynical. _Did I do that?_

The question strikes you to your core, because you realize no one has ever asked you that before. Because you realize no one has ever offered to help you shoulder that burden. You almost wish you could run, but you know that, too, would be too painful. You know that, too, would be another promise left unkept. 

_I’m just tired_ , you say, and it’s not a lie, not really, not in the way that matters right now. It doesn’t matter that this sometimes bone-crushing weariness never seems to quite leave you, doesn’t matter that you can’t remember a time you ever felt safe, felt rested. This is not why he is here, and this is not the question he wants the answer to. 

He smiles and says he’ll go to sleep, then, because it’s getting late and there are too many things to do in the morning, and as he settles in for the night, you want to say again and again and again until he believes it, _it’s okay to stop. It’s okay to take the childhood you were given. This is a gift. Take it._ And you know it will do no good, know the cloth this boy is cut from, and you think to yourself, is this a debt repaid? Or is this fate finally catching up to you? 

\---

What they don’t understand is that it’s never quite as random as you ever let on. You always get what you need, if not what you want, and you live to see another day. You wake up early each morning, and the people who are with you think it’s because that’s the way you’ve always been. Late to bed, early to rise. You’ve never told anyone that it’s because each night, your breath catches in your throat, fearful and anxious, and every morning, you wait to see if this is the day your resolve will fail you. And every morning, when the sun peeks over the edge of the horizon, casting warm orange and pink streaks across the sky, you feel like you can finally exhale again. 

There’s a night when you can’t sleep, waiting for the moon to peek out from behind the clouds, and one of the stray kids you always seem to pick up without meaning to keeps staring at you, pensive and quiet. You think you recognize that gaze. You think it may have been yours, once upon a time. You think it’s the saddest thing you’ve ever known. 

_How do you do it?_ Killua asks, this boy who has seen more death than anyone you know, this boy who has been running from his family’s promise to him, this boy whose eyes flash from soft to sharp in the blink of an eye. _How do you live with the burden?_

His voice shakes at the end and he ducks his head, and you think think of all the lives you wish you hadn’t taken and think of the heavy guilt that used to weigh you down so much that sometimes you could barely stand up in the morning. You try to remember what it was like to be so young and yet to have done so much. It’s not the same, you know, because you will never know what it’s like to be raised to kill only to wake up from that dream too late to change the destruction you’ve left in your wake. But to regret the lives you’ve taken, to try every day to make amends and repay the debts you’ve incurred, this you know too well, so you’ll try. You’ll always try. 

_Focus on the good things you have,_ you say in the end, picking your way around your own words carefully, more carefully than you have in a long, long time. _Just because the bad exists doesn’t take away the good. The memories you’ve made. The friends you have. The love you’ve found. The bad things never really leave, but sometimes, eventually, they start to seem a little farther away._

His hands clench into fists, and you know, without having to think about it, that he’s thinking about the things he can never forget, the demons chasing him that still feel too close. You know he’s thinking about every awful thing he’s ever done and wondering if he deserves any of it, any of the tenderness in his life, and you feel your chest grow tight. 

You place a gentle hand on his head, unable to find any words to express that this, for now, is enough. That the pain he feels is a part of it. That if he can get through it, he’ll realize that the guilt is unavoidable. That this alone makes you certain that he’s already leaps and bounds more deserving than most people you know are. 

He looks up at you like he thinks he’ll never get there, like he thinks that after everything, there’s still no room for love in his life. Nothing you say, you know, will change anything in this moment. Nothing you say will magically patch up the wounds that his past have left (but in time, you think, there is someone who can do that, if he lets the kindness in). Instead you offer him a small smile and hope, for now, that he will keep trying. 

\---

What they don’t understand is that this has always been deliberate. That whatever randomness you’ve courted into your life is there by design. A coping mechanism, maybe, or maybe just a bitter joke. Between only you and yourself. Between you and the world. 

You sometimes catch the two boys you’ve picked up along the way, one a long overdue promise and the other a pleasant surprise, murmuring to each other when they think you can’t hear them. _Why have this ability if you’re just going to complain about it? What’s the point?_

The point, you think, is that luck brought you to the man who saved your life. The point, you think, is that sometimes the only way to get things done is by forcing your own hand. 

It comes down to a choice: your life or someone else’s. You’ve never been good at making choices, but self-preservation has and always will win. For as much as you try, you think that you’re probably a pretty selfish man, at the end of the day. You’re told that it’s okay to worry about yourself first, that it’s okay to prioritize survival when that’s been so hard to come by. But you think to yourself that you’ve been given so much, so much time, so much trust, so much power, and you think, _is it okay to claim anything more for myself?_

_Bad roll_ , you mumble to yourself each time you fight, wishing you’d given yourself an out, knowing that you never could. The choice isn’t in the method. The choice was always in the doing. Run or hide. Stay or flee. Fight or perish. 

\---

What they don’t understand is that you always knew you would die young, that you’ve been living on borrowed time ever since you met a man who never had enough love to give, a man who was always just too distant, just too ungiving, just not tender enough for what your bruised heart always wanted (needed). You know that even after all this time, you’re still finding yourself giving more than you take, and you wonder, always, when just the little actions won’t be enough. You wonder when you’ll be asked to settle up. 

Gon asks you, _If you hate killing, why do you do it? Why do this at all?_

And you don’t know how to explain the deep fear settled deep into your bones, the dread at knowing that death is always chasing you, right at your heels. You don’t know how to explain that your tab has been steadily, rapidly growing ever since you were young, so much so that you’re not sure that you’ll never be able to repay it anymore, except with the one life you’ve not yet been willing to sacrifice. You don’t know how to say that you’re always bargaining for just one more day, because what comes after has always been too frightening, too unknown. 

_Sometimes you have to take in order to give,_ you say instead, thinking of all those years ago where you would be if you hadn’t intervened that one day on Whale Island. You still don’t know what possessed you to act that day, don’t know what drives you to make these choices every time you find someone in danger. What makes one life more precious than another? How can you possibly justify all this death?

When you enter the forest with these two boys who you know you should leave behind, you can feel the clock in the back of your mind ticking loudly. Each obstacle you pass, each small victory achieved, it gets louder and louder until it’s all you can hear. One of you will not make it out of this alive, this much you know. The choice, then, is who. 

_They’re too young_ , you think. _They’re just kids_. Maybe this is reason enough. Maybe this how the universe makes good on its deal with you. You’ve lived so much longer, seen so much more than you ever could have dreamed, and you look at them and you know they’ve never bargained for a life this short. They never entered this game. They never agreed to this price. You did. 

You tell them to run, knowing that even this will be a battle, knowing that Gon won’t want to leave you to die, gravely injured already and alone, and you want to say (don’t have time to say) that it’s okay. It’s okay to run sometimes. It’s okay to be selfish. It’s okay to be afraid. 

You watch them disappear into the woods, and you roll the dice one last time, knowing that this is a game the house will ultimately win. It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself, even as the old fear creeps up the back of your throat. It doesn’t matter, because all you need is time, not to survive, not to live, and wringing out all the extra minutes you have left in this world is the one thing you’ve always been good at. 

A voice in the back of your head says, _I don’t want to die._

You do the calculation in your head and the numbers still come up even. The math still works, no matter how much the most panicked part of you wishes it wouldn’t. 

A voice in the back of your head says, _But why do I have to die like this?_

Maybe this is what the universe has been pulling you towards all this time. Maybe this is why you got such a good deal in the first place. 

_Bad roll,_ you murmur to yourself, and for the first time, you think you actually mean it. You steel yourself and grit your teeth against the pain blurring your vision. _Bad, bad roll._

\---

( Somewhere, far away, your body is returned to where it belongs, but your soul stays behind. If you try hard enough, you can feel it still, the last tethers you have to that life pulling you like in a dream.

_I’m sorry_ , you hear Gon say, his small arms clutching at your waist as if he knows there’s not much more holding your body up than a few threads of someone else’s will. _It’s my fault, I’m sorry._

And you want to say the thing you’ve been trying to tell him ever since you met him. That it’s okay. That you have no regrets. That it was never a choice in the first place.

That maybe, you think, this thing that you’ve lived your whole life fearing doesn’t have to be the end. )

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are so very appreciated! 
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](http://drbonesmccoy.tumblr.com) if you feel so inclined!


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